Embodiment of Interconnection

by Sabrina Page - 

Embodiment – living in awareness through your body – is also the way to feel interconnected to everything and everyone.  

As I turn my attention within my body, beyond my skin into my tailbone for instance, and I begin to explore how my tailbone moves ever so gently, I feel how it is connected to tissue and fluid, how the small muscles hold it in place, how there is a living web of aliveness inside my pelvis.  

Just as there is a world of beauty under the still surface of a lake or the waves of the ocean, there is a world of unimaginable complexity within us – a living breathing ecosystem.

As we connect up the dots in our own bodies we become aware, in a tangible physical way, that we are a part of everything. 

Our breath, our blood, our hearts are totally dependent on the air and water which surrounds us.  Our bodies are supported by the ground – the living Earth – through our feet and legs. 

We are warmed by the sun and soothed by the moon. 

As I consciously begin to acknowledge the ways in which I am intricately interconnected, I enter into deeper and more alive part of myself.

Feeling and sensing are the ways we embody – feeling an emotion, feel into how it lives in my torso, how I tense or erupt in laughter when hearing someone speak. A gentle doe bounds across the yard and I soften in sweet connection.  

We are inextricably linked, and by attending moment to moment, we become aware of the living web that holds us.  As I write this on the page my muscles are firing and my breath is moving, stirring the fluids inside me. 

If I am engaged and excited, my breath moves in deeper waves.  If I am bored or angry, my breath takes on a different shape.  I look out the window, called by the insistent pecking of the woodpecker, and my breath changes again. 

I am amused and delighted, and ripples swirl in my belly.  All the while I am connected through my bones to the chair, held in gravity and the embrace of the air around me.

In the morning I write and move, exploring on the large area rug in my living room, noticing what words come without agenda, following the voices in my body. 

An ache or a stiffness somewhere in my body, or a sensual stretch, each morning some new way in.  Extending my fingers, the skin on my arms gently pulls over my muscle, I am drawn to my ribs and the movement of my breath. 

My heart stirs in recognition of the subtle effort all around its resting place. 

All of this and more in a moment, then in the next moment I become aware of the birdsong outside.

If I follow the feeling evoked by the sweet tones, I will feel a corresponding movement inside me.  Life can be very simple if I begin by noticing what is within and around me. 

It is a path that never ends, deepening in embodiment I grow in ever expanding joy, held in a web of interconnection, grateful for each moment.

Gratitude is another way to enter the web of connection.. When I feel stuck or disconnected, gratitude can be a way to reconnect. 

Thich Nhat Hanh speaks of moving from the top of the head down, feeling grateful for each part of your body.  Or I feel my gratitude for the tree outside my window, for the shelter from the sun and wind it provides, or its gentle beauty and presence.  

In that moment I once again feel interconnected and held by my surroundings. I am not moving through the world, over a landscape,

I am embodied and embedded within its contours. I become aware that I am a small part of a vast and intricate living Earth, wild and free, changing moment to moment and yet held in an elemental web of mystery.

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